Tag Archives: Italy

Italian-Americans often seem to be more Italian than actual, you know, Italians. Maybe that’s why Moto Guzzi, Europe’s oldest motorcycle manufacturer in continuous production, have named as many of their bikes after American places as Italian ones.

This is one such bike, the Daytona 1000, as built by previous bloggee Angka Utama. Powered by a V-Twin producing around 100bhp the Daytona was a quick bike in its day, and was produced during the ’90s when the brand was under DeTomaso’s ownership.

There’s more to see of Angka’s excellent Model Team recreation of the Moto Guzzi Daytona 1000 at both Flickr and MOCpages – click the links to go for a ride.

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Andrea Lattanzio aka Norton74‘s beautiful OM Leoncino (which translates literally as ‘little lion’) tanker truck featured here last month as part of his stunning AGIP gas station diorama, and Andrea has now uploaded more detailed images of the model from his larger build.

At only 8-studs wide Andrea’s OM Leoncino tanker packs in some astonishingly accurate detailing, helped no doubt by the wonderful ‘AGIP’ and ‘Supercortemaggiore’ decals applied to enhance the realism. There’s more to see of Andrea’s little lion on Flickr via the link above, you can read our interview with him as part of the Master MOCers series by clicking here, and today’s excellent title song can be found here.

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If you had to place a bet in the 1960s on which car manufacturer, BMW or Lancia, would be a multi-million unit selling colossus in 2018, it wouldn’t have been on the firm from Bavaria.

Lancia weren’t just a manufacturer of exceptional drivers saloon cars in the golden years, they were a pioneer. The first company to use monocoque construction, independent suspension, and even complete electrics, Lancia are one of the automotive innovators of the 30’s-’80s. BMW meanwhile, were making this…

Sadly though, under FIAT’s ownership today they’re not even a shadow of a shadow of their former self. Fortunately Senator Chinchilla of Flickr is here to remind us of what Lancia used to be, thanks to his glorious ’60s Fulvia Rallye with opening doors, hood and trunk, and a detailed recreation of Lancia’s ingenious narrow-angle double overhead cam V4 engine.

There’s a whole lot more of the Senator’s brilliant Lancia Fulvia to see at his photostream – click the link above to make the jump to Lancia’s golden years.

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Things always sound cooler in Italian. This glorious 1960s gas station comes from Master MOCer Andrea Lattanzio aka Norton74. It’s a mini-figure scale replica of one of AGIP’s modernist gas stations that were built across Italy, with curved glass walls, sloping roofs, and a six-legged dog on a stick in the forecourt. Andrea has recreated the structure beautifully, including all the paraphernalia to be found in at Italian gas station in the ’60s, plus a superb period-correct OM Leoncino tanker. There’s a whole lot more of the build to see at Andrea’s Flickr album by clicking this link, plus you can read his interview here at TLCB as part of the Master MOCer series via the link in the text above.

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LEGO’s Speed Champions sets have brought some of the most exciting new and classic real-world cars to Lego fans in brick form. From modern McLarens to classic Mustangs, the range covers about 60 years of motoring greats. But what if it went back into the annuls of automotive history just a little further…

The first (top, in red) is a 1920 Mercer 5 Sporting, built by the American motor car company that manufactured high performance cars from 1909 until the Great Depression put them out of business in 1925 some 5,000 units later.

The second (above, in green) is also a vintage American, but from a company that survived the depression era and is still making cars today. Founded in 1902 Cadillac are one of the oldest car companies in the world and have been owned by General Motors since 1909. The model pictured above dates from 1928 and Łukasz has used some ingenious building techniques to recreate the cycle-wings and carriage-type body typical of the time.

The final of Łukasz’s three vintage builds (above, in brown) comes from the other side of the Atlantic and Italy, where Lancia have been producing cars since 1906. Lancia are now sadly a shadow of their previous greatness and today produce just one car (an ugly Fiat knock-off), making us fear that they’ll be gone altogether before long.

This 1922 Lambda was the polar opposite of their hateful modern offering, a revolutionary design that pioneered independent suspension, the world’s first unitary body, and that produced almost 70bhp from its four-cylinder engine.

The Lambda has been recreated beautifully by Łukasz in the model pictured above and there’s more to see of it the other excellent vintage Speed Champions cars shown here by visiting his photostream – click here to see some of the finest cars of 1920s.

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This might be the most Italian thing we’ve ever seen. This beautiful scene complete with two of Italy’s most iconic vehicles, the Vespa scooter and the Fiat 500, comes from the very Italian-sounding Gabriele Zannotti and the, er… Greek-sounding Zeto Vince. Whatever, this could only be more Italian with the addition of a pretty girl, and there’s more to see of this excellent collaboration at Gabriele Zannotti’s photostream – click here to take a look.

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Is there anything prettier than a girl on a Vespa?* Nope. Not unless you’re the new White House Press Secretary (whereby the prettiest thing ever witnessed is President Donald Trump, period). Previous bloggee ZetoVince may not have built a girl to accompany his Vespa, but his Lego recreation of the iconic Italian scooter is absolutely gorgeous. There’s more to see of this beautiful model on Flickr, where you can also vote for it to become an official LEGO set via LEGO Ideas – click the link above to go for a ride.

*We’ve done the research, see here. And here. And here. Blogging is tough sometimes.

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This modified garbage-can arrangement is apparently a Semovente M47 Audax Battle Mech. Created by Flickr’s Marco Marozzi, the Semovente was engineered after an alien ship crashed in Italy in 1933, following which the facist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini put it to work to reverse the losses Italy were facing in North Africa during World War 2.

The mech and its backstory might be fictional, but sadly Mussolini wasn’t, joining forces with Hitler to regain an Italian empire during the Second World War, despite the fact he actually thought Hitler’s ‘Aryan race’ ideas were nonsense. Still, a nice man he was not, brutally crushing all opposition to take absolute power, persecuting the Christian faith, and dividing Italy to create his own Italian Social Republic.

The Italian King finally managed to overthrow Mussolini in 1943, upon which he was jailed – his new puppet state lasting just 19 months. The Germans helped him escape from prison in 1945, but the war was almost over and he was promptly recaptured and executed by Italian Communists.

Had an alien ship really crashed in secret in 1933 though, the outcome of the War, and the future of Europe and North Africa, could have been very different… There’s more to see of Marco’s alternate dieselpunk reality on Flickr – click the link above to take a look.